From a young age, San Antonio photographer Al Rendón felt a compulsion to photograph events. In 1969, as he watched the moon landing, the twelve-year-old took a photo of his television set. That same year, when he heard the film Viva Max! was shooting in downtown San Antonio, he snapped pictures of the actors (before security shooed him away). By the time he was sixteen years old, he was confident enough to take his high school’s photography equipment to a Led Zeppelin concert, rushing the stage to get close shots.
From September 2 through January 7, San Antonio’s Witte Museum will run a fifty-year retrospective of Rendón’s work: “Mi Cultura—Bringing Shadows Into the Light: The Photography of Al Rendón.” The show includes the 66-year-old’s early rock photographs as well as his street photography, portraits of tejano and conjunto artists, and images of icons from his hometown. “Each of his photos has a ‘tell,’ and I love looking for them in his photographs,” said the Witte’s president and CEO, Marise McDermott. “In a charreada photo, for example, a young horsewoman’s boots are very worn. That’s an Al signature: they’re worn because she practiced, and he followed her as she was practicing, for hours and hours and hours. That’s the kind of tell that he has.
“He’s a narrator, a storyteller,” she continued.
As a preview of his show, we’ve asked Rendón, who has shot for Texas Monthly over the years, to comment on a few selections from his archive.
“I took this photo of Freddie King in 1974 during an outdoor festival. He was backstage and I asked if I could take his picture, and he says, “Wait, wait, come over here.” We walked over to his new car, which he was very proud of. He put on this big necklace and belt and posed in front of his Cadillac.”
“After photographing a Led Zeppelin concert with school equipment my high school sophomore year, in 1973, I started doing photos for other rock and roll concerts, which I did religiously for almost ten years. That taught me a lot, technically, on how to shoot live performance. During concerts in those days, the promoters didn’t want you using a flash, so I had to learn how to wait till the performer stopped, then wait till the spotlight hit. I also learned how to negotiate with all these different players who were much older than me. I’d get thrown out several times, but because I knew every usher and every doorman, and they’d let me right back in. The promoters were like: ‘How did you get back in here again? I just threw you out!’ ”
Al Rendón
“I was invited to be in an art exhibit at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center by Kathy Vargas. The theme of the exhibit was the Virgen de Guadalupe. This one is from that series, taken in San Antonio.”
Al Rendón
“This is another one in the Virgen de Guadalupe series. It’s Raúl Salinas, who was a jailhouse poet, and when he got out of prison, he had a scholarship paying for [the University of Washington]. He [studied] literature, opened a bookstore in Austin, taught at UT, and, unfortunately, passed away cancer a few years back. But he showed up at my door with [San Antonio musician and activist] Juan Tejeda when I was there to photograph something else. And I was in the process of doing this series on the Virgen for that show. I told them about it. He says, ‘Oh, well then you need to photograph my tattoo.’ He takes his shirt off! And so that’s how I got that photograph.”
Al Rendón
“I shot the Conjunto Festival back in 1985. At that time, a lot of these old guys were still around, and I got to document all of them playing and backstage, and these guys were not on a high pay scale at all. But it was fun. I did the festival every year from ’85 to ’95.”
Al Rendón
“I was doing photographs for a lot of the tejano artists for a while. It helped that I was Mexican American and could speak Spanish, because a lot of these bands were coming from Mexico. We had three or four major labels here in San Antonio that were signing up all these acts because that was the most popular music on radio at the time here—and practically in every major market in the Southwest.
“The very first time I saw Selena perform outside of the Tejano Music Awards, I had never seen her before. She was probably only seventeen years old. And with her band, I could immediately tell she was going to be big. I mean, she just had that something, you know. I made sure that every opportunity I could, I would take her picture.”
Al Rendón
“I love this picture of Sandra Cisneros because of her dog. She asked me to come over because she needed some PR photos for a book. We did a bunch of pictures at her house. Then she walked me out the front, and she stopped on her porch and sat down and said, ‘Let’s take a picture here.’ One of her favorite dogs—because she always has a lot of dogs—was this dog named Beto, who came and stood there posing for the picture. And then that little statue was there! It just made the perfect composition.”
Al Rendón
“I tell new photographers who ask for advice: You need to meet your subject. You’ve got to get close. Don’t stand behind the fence. Get as close as they’ll let you get. Even if they don’t let you—get closer.”
Al Rendón
“This guy I caught right outside the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. I call him Cisco Kid. This old man, I’d never seen him before. He had a great outfit on. He had a hat with him, you know, armadillo pin, jumping horses. He had a bolo with horses on it. His belt. He probably had his hooch and his cane. I walked right past him to make a delivery of some photos, and the director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts says, ‘Did you see that guy? Go take his picture.’ He was waiting for the bus, and I asked him in Spanish, ‘Can I take your picture?’ He just nodded and stood up and I took his picture, like one or two frames. Then he was gone. After that, I would occasionally see him here and there in the neighborhood on the West Side. I wanted to give him a print. I can’t find him. He kind of disappeared. But he’s immortalized now in this photograph.”
Al Rendón
“Back in 1985, I began doing photos for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, and that totally opened up my eyes to my Mexican American culture. This was a flamenco class taught by Teresa Champion—a famous dancer here in town. There are four generations of flamenco dancers in her family.”
Al Rendón
“When I was in Guadalajara, I was sitting in a huge market area, and I looked across the way and I could see those blinds. They got my attention because they were graphic. Then I saw that these two people were there. As I reached up to take a picture, the woman’s hand came out and then she just slightly moved her foot. It made all the difference in the world in that picture. You wonder what those people are talking about.”
